Cuban volleyball player Ailama Sese Montalvo did not leave Uralochka-NTMK because of racist remarks by Lokomotiv Kaliningrad head coach Andrei Voronkov and is ready to return, the medalist told Olympic silver in volleyball Tatyana Gracheva.
On Monday, the executive committee of the All-Russian Volleyball Federation (VVF) approved a two-year disqualification of Voronkov for racially slurring Cuban volleyball player Montalvo.
“I think it’s a severe punishment,” Gracheva told . – I would like to apologize to everyone and say that we have no racism. Andrei Gennadievich is a unique specialist who has reached great heights with both men and women. He won the league, the cup, the champions league and the european championship. The fact that we leave such a specialist out of work, I think is a gross misunderstanding that it happened at all. In our volleyball family, we didn’t show up very well, we kind of started correcting it at the wrong time.
What do you think the punishment should have been?
– I do not know. Here, all decisions are made by the federation. Arguing with them is empty and pointless. If they accepted it, then that’s okay. There can be no dispute here. On the contrary, by their behavior they show that we have no racism, that such an accident happened. The fact that the club and Andrei Gennadievich himself could have behaved differently is now considered by many. Unfortunately, there is nothing to fix. I’m really sorry this happened. Now many say Ailama left because of it. Nothing like. She was going to leave earlier. Thank goodness she is ready to come back to our league. She also understands very well. This is just an isolated case. The punishment is severe, but apparently it should be so that we don’t have such incidents in the future.
On May 12, Voronkov, during a timeout in the fifth game of the final series of the Russian championship with Uralochka-NTMK, giving instructions to his players, dismissed Valery Zaitseva and said: “Why are you still catching this monkey?” The phrase hit the tune “”. For the team from the Sverdlovsk region, the Cuban player Ailama Sese Montalvo played, who later left the club.
Subsequently, the VFV disciplinary commission recommended to the executive committee of the organization to disqualify Voronkov for up to two years. It was noted that the specialist, “despite the obviousness of the situation, in principle refused to apologize to Uralochka-NTMK and personally to Montalvo.” Lokomotiv later apologised.
Source : MatchTV
